This graph of the yen to euro exchange rate shows a beautiful, almost linear, upward trend of the yen weakening against the euro. This trend continues until a few days ago, the very day that we decided to move yen to euro. Curses!
We can only hope that the current behavior follows the blip seen at the beginning of March 2007. With the elections soon in Japan and the almost certain political uncertainty, perhaps the yen will weaken once again…
I just got my passport back in the mail. Only about one week after I dropped it off at the post office. I had to go to the post office to pick it up as La Poste decided not to put in the effort to ring up our apartment when they tried to deliver it. Still what a relief. I was half expecting La Poste to lose it.
It is now almost doubled in size with a twenty-four page insert ‘numbered’ from ‘A’ to ‘X’. Oddly enough, one and a half of the pages are taken up by an explanation of the insert. Still, twenty-two visa pages will be more than enough to last until renewal time.
朝青龍は７月場所の優勝です！２１優勝目に４０場所目だ。
最初日以外に負けなくて頑張ったんだね。初めての横綱同士の対決も勝ったし。っていうわけで回復したみたい。おめでとう。
関脇琴光喜も頑張ったんだ。新横綱白鵬に勝ったし最後まで優勝する可能性もあったし。今回大関に絶対なるよ。
新横綱白鵬が先場所の朝青龍みたいに中日までに強そうで、中日を過ぎてから負け始めたのは残念だね。まぁ〜、若いからまだまだだね。
９月場所が楽しそうだね。
Spoiler alert! The title of the seventh book: “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” !!!
… ok, very funny, I know. We just got back from picking up our shiny new copy from WH Smith in Paris. We finally got back a little before 2:30am, which was within the time that we had guessed 3am.
As the metro was no longer running, we caught the night bus back (we were quite lucky to catch it shortly after we reached the bus stop in front of Le Louvre). On the bus there were quite a few people who had just bought the book.
We’ve decided to read two chapters at a time, handing off each time to the other, so that we can keep on the same page, so to speak, and periodically discuss developments.
… pictures to come (it’s too late now. I must resist the temptation to read the book. Must sleep…)
Update: Pictures…
(1) The throng of Harry Potter fans inside WH Smith before the book release
(2) The prepaid line in front of WH Smith stretches along the arcade parallel to Rue de Rivoli.
(3) After getting our copy at 1:30 am, hoards of people were still lined up in front of WH Smith.
It’s Harry Potter Day! The release of the seventh and final installment of the series. We’ll be attending the Harry Potter release at WH Smith in Paris. We’ve already pre-paid for our book and have only to brave the queue.
The first books will be distributed at 1:01 am here in Paris, timed to coincide with the just after midnight release in London.
We’ve already made our predictions to the unresolved questions in the series. Will they collapse like a house of cards? What will happen in the end? Who will die? Who will live? … Who will be born?
It’s off to the bookstore soon. The excitement builds!
My passport is all filled up. It would have been full a bit sooner, but some of the EU countries no longer have passport control for intra-European flights. As for France, sometimes the only way to get a stamp from the French immigration control is to explicitly ask for one, even when coming in from an international flight.
Anyways, I’ll be needing some free pages soon, including one for a nice new Japanese visa.
So today I sent off my passport to the U.S. embassy to have additional visa pages added. Unfortunately, this process must be initiated through mail (barring urgent requests, of course). That makes me a bit nervous, as I don’t exactly have much confidence in La Poste (due to both personal experiences and stories from French friends).
It took a while to explain to the clerk how I wanted to include a pre-paid envelope inside the envelope I would send to the embassy. And then, instead of printing out a label with the exact postage, the clerk thumbed through a book of stamps to find the right combination corresponding to the postage. It didn’t seem to be an easy process. At one point, while consulting his computer terminal he exclaimed, “C’est quoi ce truc là? C’est nul ou quoi!”. Well, we all do that, I suppose… And of course he made a mistake on the postage for the return envelope, realizing it after he had sealed the carrier envelope. After correcting the error by adding some additional postage (which corresponds exactly to what is written on the embassy website), he resealed the envelope with a small piece of tape that barely looked sufficient to do the job.
Yikes. I really hope that it gets there and back OK. I’ll be needing it in less than two weeks…
Update: According to La Poste’s tracking service, it seems to have been delivered properly to the embassy on the 19th. Now I’ll cross my fingers and hope that it comes back next week.
I had meant to post this earlier… A few weeks ago, Bruce Willis was in France promoting his new movie (the latest installment in the Die Hard series) and he was doing an interview on the evening news on TF1 (with the famous anchor parodied by Les Guignols de l’Info, Patrick Poivre d’Arvor). Though his responses were in English, with a French voiceover, he could clearly understand French. He didn’t wait for translation and he gave some short responses in French to some of the questions, such as ‘exactement’, before launching into more detail in English. At the end of the interview, he gave a “je vous en prie” response to the thanks given by the host anchor.
It reminded me of the period during the two weeks of the Cannes film festival in May. It was interesting to watch the parade of American actors and actresses interviewed on French TV. Most didn’t speak French, but occasionally we would see someone try it out, no matter how broken it was.
Sorry, all you hardcore conservatives out there who may think that he could be a ‘friendly’ in a sea of wild-eyed Hollywood liberals, but yes, even Bruce Willis speaks French.
先週、新横綱白鵬が横綱にして初めての土俵入り式を参加しました。数年ぶりの横綱同士の土俵入り式だった。
今日は名古屋場所の初日だった。新横綱白鵬が初めて試合を勝った。負けるみたいなという時もあったがドキドキしても結果は結果だ。
他方で、立ち合いがよくなかった横綱の朝青龍は負けちゃった。また初日から？！
という訳で。。。今年朝青龍の時代が終わりそうだね。朝青龍が回復しないと白鵬の時代になるでしょう。
どうなるのかな。。。
On a reçu les résultats de nos examens aujourd’hui. Nous avons bien reussis, tous les deux!
Ma femme m’a appelé et m’a dit que les resultats ces sont arrivés par courier. Elle m’a dit qu’elle a réussi mais ce n’était pas une grande réussite. J’étais sur qu’elle a réussi bien plus que moi en tout cas. Bien qu’elle a passé un niveau plus élevé que le mien, ça m’a fait peur, si elle m’a dit qu’il s’en fallu de peu.
Elle a laissé l’enveloppe avec mes résultats pour moi-meme d’ouvrir et découvrir.
Donc j’étais un peu inquieté de mes résultats.
Cependant, quand je suis rentré, j’ai vu ses résultats. Elle était bien trop modeste! Elle a réussi pas mal.
J’ai soulevé l’enveloppe avec mes résultats au lumiere et regardé l’enveloppe. Le papier d’enveloppe c’était bien fin et je l’ai rendu transparent. Et puis j’ai vue en lettres noirs “Réussite”! De plus j’ai réussi beacoup plus que je pensais.
C’est une bonne senstation.
Ça me rappelle qu’à ce temps, l’année dernière, je ne parlais pas encore français. Je n’avais pas meme pris un cours de français. Par contre, maitenant je travaille en français et je viens de réussir mon examen de français. Quel progrès!
…On espère qu’on peut trouver un emploi au Japon, utilisant anglais, japonais, et bien français. Ça serait parfait, n’est pas?
